ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

ISO 216

ISO 216 is a special kind of rule made for paper. Imagine you want to cut a big piece of paper into many little pieces, maybe for a school project or to write a letter. But you want all the pieces to be the same shape and size, so they look nice and neat.

ISO 216 helps with this by telling you how big each piece should be. This rule says that if you start with a really big piece of paper (called A0), you can cut it in half to make two smaller pieces (called A1). And then you can cut those in half to make even smaller pieces (called A2), and keep doing this until you get to the size you need.

The cool thing about ISO 216 is that all the different sizes are in proportion to each other. That means they all have the same shape, just size differently. So if you fold an A4 piece of paper in half, you get two A5 pieces that are the same shape.

This rule is used in many countries around the world, which makes it easy for people to exchange papers and know they will fit in their folders or binders. So now you know that ISO 216 is a special rule for cutting paper that helps make all the pieces the same shape and size, and it's used in many places around the world.